The present invention relates to a pneumatic tire, more particularly to a unidirectional tread pattern suitable for heavy duty tires and capable of improving the drainage and the wear resistance in a well balanced manner.
In the heavy duty tires such as truck/bus tires, rib-type tread patterns are widely employed. But, in order to obtain good wet performances, block-type tread patters are also widely employed in recent years.
The drainage performance of a block-type tread pattern can be improved by increasing the widths of grooves dividing the blocks.
In the case of the heavy duty tires, as the load or ground pressure of each block is very high in comparison with the passenger car tires, the wear of the block is very liable to increase even if the rigidity decrease of the block due to the increased groove width is small.